Letters to the Editor

Joseph L. Conn Managing Editor Church & State Magazine Americans
United for Separation of Church and State Silver Spring, Md.

In responding to my essay opposing public funding for parochial and
other private schools ("Making Private Schools 'More Equal,"' Education
Week, Nov. 16, 1983), Richard Baer asks several questions in his essay
("On the Fairness of a State School Monopoly," Education Week, Dec. 21,
1983) about the fairness of my position. I respond.

Yes, it is fair for "those Americans who believe in freedom of
conscience and freedom of teaching and learning to be forced to support
a monopoly system of government schools." Government in the United
States does not offer its benefits, services, and protections on a
user-fee system. All Americans who pay taxes are asked to support
essential public services whether they use them directly or not. Single
taxpayers, married couples with no children, and older couples whose
children are no longer in school must all contribute their taxes to the
support of the public-school system. So must parents who patronize
parochial schools. Certainly each of these people benefits whether
their children are enrolled in public school or not. A democratic
society could not function without an educated citizenry.

Yes, it is fair to confine tax support to the religiously neutral
public schools. It truly would be a violation of the basic tenets of
liberty to force taxpayers to contribute their resources to parochial
schools that teach religious doctrines that taxpayers do not share.
Contrary to Mr. Baer's assertions, it is not a "combination of
bureaucrats, professional educators, and textbook publishers" that
controls the public schools. It is the voting public. And there is no
single monolithic system of "government schools." There are in fact
some 14,000 separate, independent public-school districts, with
governing boards that reflect the wonderful diversity that is
America.

Yes, it is fair to maintain the religious neutrality of the public
schools, and that includes banning the teaching of "secular humanism."
However, contrary to Mr. Baer's assertion, there is little, if any,
credible evidence that such a religion is being taught anywhere. The
"first-rate scholars of national stature" that Mr. Baer cites to
support his point are, in fact, political ideologues bent on destroying
the public-school system.

Edward Jenkins, a professor at Indiana University and an expert on
the topic, says "the secular-humanism charge is a well-planned, clever
attack on the public schools designed by certain religio-political
activists to accomplish several goals. They want to get rid of
educational practices they do not like. ... They also want to restore
prayer and Bible reading to the public schools. They want to turn the
clock back at least three decades to make education resemble what some
people think it was then. Ultimately, they want to destroy public
education and replace it with government-funded private education. But
most fundamentally, they want to impose one specific view of the world,
of religion, and of reality on the entire nation."

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has long offered
to go to court to free any public school held captive by secular
humanists. So far, no one has offered a shred of evidence admissible in
court to support such a charge.

Finally, it is fair to oppose parochial-school educators who seek
public funds, because such funding would violate a basic American
constitutional principle--the separation of church and state.
Certainly, there has been religious strife in American history, but it
has been slight compared to the terrible religious intolerance in other
coutries without the separation principle. The independence and
vitality of church schools can best be preserved by protecting their
financial integrity. Government funds would (and should) bring
government controls. Taxpayers would have a right to see that their
funds were not spent to subsidize discrimination in any form. And
virtually all religious schools, by their very nature, discriminate in
religious matters.

Mr. Baer challenged the "intellectual bankruptcy and lack of
historical perspective" of Americans United. Such invective is
unfortunate and unnecessary in this important debate. I do not believe
Mr. Baer is "intellectually bankrupt"; he is just wrong.

Robert Primack Editor Foundations Monthly Newsletter College of
Education University of Florida Gainesville, Fla.

Richard Baer's notion of what constitutes fairness on the tuition
tax-credit issue is remarkably similar to my undergraduates' notion of
what constitutes fairness. There is a peculiar correspondence between
those who receive an A from me and are thereby convinced I am Olympian
in my judgments, and those who receive an F and are absolutely
convinced that I am Satan's spawn.

It is not terribly original to point out, but necessary in this
case, that what constitutes "fairness" is very frequently determined by
whose ox is being gored. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church gets a
free ride on my tax money to propagandize for the use of various
federal and state powers to limit some common forms of birth control. I
happen to believe--based not on blind faith, but on sound scientific
evidence--that the lack of planned-parenthood techniques threatens the
survival of the human race. Is it fair that my tax burden is greater
and I therefore cannot contribute as much to a cause that I believe in
because the Church's tax burden is nonexistent?

But before we settle the fairness issue finally and for all time, we
ought to examine both the historical causes and the philosophical
motives that prompted that unique creation known at the common-school
movement in these United States. The two basic assumptions that drove
Horace Mann and the rest of that gallant crew were: One, there were
vast numbers of children growing up uneducated, and this was a threat
to the survival of the Republic; and two, the most desirable form of
public education in a pluralistic society was one that provides
significant common experiences in order that this pluralistic society
not be torn apart by religious, social, and economic strife.

To the extent that there were not common shared experiences, the
Republic was in danger of going the way of many European societies that
had split along religious or socioeconomic lines. (What is going on now
in Ireland should be enough of a frightening example for Mr. Baer.)

That the ideal of the common school was never fully realized is, of
course, no reason to turn our backs on it now. On the contrary, those
of us who are educators must redouble our efforts to bring the vision
of Horace Mann closer to realization because now, more than ever, the
survival of the nation depends on it.

But let me expose one other absurd judgment Mr. Baer attempts to
promulgate, namely the so-called monolithic nature of the American
system of public education. Commonality does not ensure monopoly by any
means. In 50 states, with hundreds of independent school boards, with
millions of teachers, with a vast variety of student populations, to
talk of the philosophical or any other kind of monopoly of education
raises as big a golem of a straw man as ever appeared in an educational
publication. Are kids in a rural school in Arkansas, kids in Scarsdale,
N.Y., and kids in a Harlem school all pressed into the same
philosophical, methodological, and curricular mold? Have they ever
been? A common school need not, should not, and has never been a
monolithic school.

The most valuable gift we can give all our children is to send them
to a common school that really works. Anything that takes away from the
endeavor, as tuition tax credits certainly will, is profoundly
subversive of that American ideal. We should privatize and separate in
so far as is possible our religious, ethnic, and political beliefs from
the American schoolhouse. America provides enough freedom, leisure, and
money for most of its citizens to inculcate their children outside the
schoolhouse with any private peculiarities parents want to force-feed
them with, from astrology to creationism to Zen Buddhism. Under our
American system, even if our public schools were bound and determined
to be monolithic, there is no way they could produce robots. Tomorrow
morning, under our Constitution, Mr. Baer, if he so desires, could
start up the Reverend Jim Jones Suicide Memorial School. Should my tax
money be forced to pay for that?

Our children face some terribly difficult times ahead, probably more
difficult than any in the history of the nation. They need a
fundamental common experience if they are to cooperate successfully in
solving their future problems. Tuition tax credits will, in the long
run, with their segregating tendencies, prove even more destructive to
the common national effort than racial segregation was. They are a
formula for disaster.

Regarding your article, "State Chiefs Seek End to Ed.-School
Requirement for Teachers" (Education Week, Dec. 7, 1983), it seems to
me that the members of this august body are speaking out of both sides
of their respective mouths. On the one hand, we are told that doing
away with undergraduate education courses as a requirement for teacher
certification is desirable. On the other hand, we are informed that a
fifth year should be added to undergraduate teacher training.

If there is no need for education courses for prospective teachers,
why is an extra year needed? What, in fact, is "teacher training" under
their proposal? If education classes are not needed, we should be able
to turn out "teachers" in three and a half years.

Daniel J. Maloney Director Ocean Tides School Narragansett, R.I.

At a time when every possible solution is being considered in an
effort to improve education in this country, I was horrified to read
Edmund Janko's Commentary, "Uncle Miltie's Inservice Special: The
Teacher as Stand-Up Comic" (Education Week, Dec. 14, 1983).

While humor definitely has a place in our schools, the type of
laughter Mr. Janko proposes does not. To encourage teachers to develop
"coping" skills at the students' expense will only serve to lead
education on a deteriorating course.

Is it any wonder that there are problems in education when students
are considered dullards who should be "put down" and "skewered with
venom-dipped words"?

Look at successful schools. There you will find caring teachers who
seek to motivate, encourage, and reinforce students' sense of self
worth. There you will find the blend of skill building, problem
solving, and positive relationships between students and teachers.
There you won't find a venomous Uncle Miltie!

Hendrik D. Gideonse Dean College of Education University of
Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio

The prominence you gave to President Reagan's speech at the National
Forum on Excellence in Education in Indianapolis last month ("Forum
Said Successful in Rallying Support for Change," Education Week, Dec.
14, 1983, and "Text of the President's Speech at the National Forum on
Excellence," Education Week, Dec. 21, 1983) prompts me to share the
following assessment.

There was, I submit, broad agreement among conference participants
on several points: Reforming American education will take time and will
be a complex undertaking necessarily embracing both higher and
elementary and secondary education. Looking for scapegoats will only
prove unproductive and debilitating because all of us are to blame in
one way or another; conversely, we all have roles to play in improving
education. More money will be needed, and it will be needed from local,
state, and federal sources. Entry-level salaries of teachers are far
too low. Preservice and inservice education of professionals is
seriously undersupported. There is much we do not know and considerable
demand for the design and construction of materials, techniques, and
equipment that will support teachers in improving their instructional
effectiveness. No money should be spent, however, unless it is tied to
real reform. Merit pay, seductively simple, is a dead issue because it
is too difficult to implement, misses too many marks, and sets in
motion secondary consequences even worse than the conditions it was
intended to correct.

These conclusions were accompanied by a broad-based, insistent, and
cooperative resolve to work together, across roles and between levels
of government, to continue beyond the initial steps that have been
taken to bring about fundamental reform.

Given the context of the conference, then, President Reagan's final
address to the forum was almost stunning in its misjudgment of the
importance and meaning of what had taken place. His speech was the
typical honeyed performance we have come to expect; the first of its
six essential elements was itself a six-part exhortation: "You folks go
out there and do these things!" But the order of the President's
listing, widely reported on television and in the press, clearly
implied that America's educational problems are caused mainly by
undisciplined students. Even more sensationalistic was his implication
that American schools are "drug dens" that need only to be turned back
into "temples of learning." These self-indulgent, finger-pointing
characterizations and the prominence given them by the President
contrasted sharply with the otherwise conciliatory, yet purposeful,
tone of the gathering.

President Reagan then exhumed two hoary elements of his
"educational-reform program"--tuition tax credits and school prayer.
What either has to contribute to the reform of public education in
America is, at best, obscure. The universal scoffing reaction to his
identical response to the report of the National Commission on
Excellence in Education last April should have persuaded him not to
make the same mistake twice!

The fourth plank in President Reagan's reform agenda was to call
again for merit pay. The recommendation drew scattered applause, to be
sure, but more came from the ranks of the hundreds who had been
admitted to the hall in addition to the forum attendees--those who were
not aware that there had been a shift away from merit pay during the
first few days of the conference.

Item five of the President's remarks was the explicit rejection of
additional funding from the federal government, which he called "tax
recycling."

The only initiative President Reagan brought to the impressive
assemblage of America's political and educational leaders--who had
heard more than one speaker despair over the reversal of values
implicit in our glorification of athletics--was a new program of
Presidential Academic Fitness Awards modeled after the President's
Physical Fitness Awards. The program will no doubt work wonders to
overcome the disorderly behavior President Reagan decried, dispatch the
drug pushers from the high-school playgrounds, and generate the base
salaries and career and professional incentives required to recruit and
retain more academically capable individuals in teaching!

President Reagan's speech was not simply a misjudgment of the tone
of the conference; it did, in fact, demean the seriousness of purpose
and willingness to engage in common cause that, I believe, represented
the true character of what took place under Secretary of Education
Terrel H. Bell's leadership. The task confronting local and state
agencies and the public at large is a huge one. All of us will have to
change--policymakers, teachers, administrators, teacher educators,
parents, and others. Important first steps have been taken, but far
more remains to be done.

Excepting the essential irrelevance of President Reagan's speech,
the national forum afforded education leaders an opportunity to
discover and reaffirm the common aims that bind them together, to
identify differing views still requiring resolution, and to take heart
from the knowledge that the impetus for reform is universally
shared.

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